Bandaid
by Lyndsay-Marie
Summary: As long as he could remember, Naruto Uzumaki had yearned to know his parents.


As long as he could remember, Naruto Uzumaki had yearned to know his parents. That's something that he'd wanted more than anything.

The first time that it had really been obvious to him, he'd been four- almost five years old. He'd been playing at one of the parks with the other children (or rather they'd all been playing and he'd just been there, too) and he'd seen one of them as they'd fallen off the side of the slide.

It had been something kind of scary and he'd seen that the other boy had a scraped up knee and it looked like it would bleed forever. The other little boy was crying, too, and Naruto felt sad for him. He'd even moved closer to the slide to make sure that he wasn't going to die from it or anything, but then a really pretty lady had shown up.

She'd even run over to where they were, and she'd pulled something out of her pocket and had picked him up and cleaned it and put a band aid on it and then had kissed it better and the other boy's crying had stopped right away.

Naruto had never seen anything like that in his whole life. When the boy stopped crying a big man had come over and patted him on the back, telling him that he had to be brave, and Naruto had just watched from behind the wooden bars of the playground, fascinated by it. He wondered if that was something magical that just happened at the playground, because he'd been hurt a whole bunch of times before. His knees were always all messy and sometimes it took a lot of time to wash the blood off when he took a bath... but no one ever fixed his bleeding spots like that woman.

For some reason he wondered if something like that was supposed to happen and he was curious. He wanted to have something like that happen to him, too, because that other boy looked happy now. He was smiling wide and he was laughing and the bigger man picked him up and tossed him over his shoulder and took him away from the playground. They all looked really, really happy and Naruto wanted to know what that was like.

So gathering up all of his bravery and courage, he'd climbed up to the slide and closed his eyes as he jumped off from the highest spot that he could find.

When he landed on the ground, he felt the pebbles on the ground dig into his knees and the tears were hot and fast to fill up his eyes. It hurt really bad, it stung and he knew that it was going to bleed and when he began to cry it was completely honest. He hurt really bad and even his hands were scraped up.

It seemed almost like he wasn't going to be able to get up or to walk, because his legs felt wobbly and sore and he thought that maybe it wasn't a good idea, but as he sat there crying softly, he imagined that it would all feel a lot better when a lady came for him, to pick him up and carry him away with a man.

If he had a band aid and someone kissed it better... he would be okay.

Except that nobody was coming. He was sitting there and his cries had slowly become sniffles and he was wiping at his eyes, smearing dusty dirt over his face as he sat there and waited. He waited for hours, until everyone had left the playground, and instead of a pretty lady coming to help him, they all looked at him strangely. With eyes that he didn't understand, and even once or twice he'd reached out one small hand, hoping for at least a little bit of help to stand up.

It wasn't until he was alone that Naruto realized that there wasn't any pretty lady there for him. Instead... it was obvious that he was all alone, and he didn't know why. It was just like how he didn't understand why he was alone when he went to bed. Sometimes he'd heard the other kids talk about how there was always hot food and a hot bath and someone who would tuck them in and kiss their heads and chase away all of the bad dreams.

Naruto had bad dreams sometimes. A big monster that came to try to take him away, and he'd wake up scared, too. But there wasn't anyone there to scare away the bad dreams and the monsters. There was never anyone there who could kiss him goodnight and his food was brought to him by a really old man who left it at his door sometimes.

He remembered to take a bath most of the time, though, and sometimes- sometimes when he dreamed it was different. Sometimes there was a pretty lady in his dreams who was smiling at him and telling him that everything was okay and that he just had to be brave, and there was a man with her, too. A big, strong man who told Naruto that he was special. That he was a hero.

Those dreams made him feel strange, though. Like his heart was really heavy.

As he grabbed onto the side of on of the bigger wooden planks of the play ground, Naruto pulled his small body up from the pebbles and forced a small smile. People were probably thinking that he was weak, already. Because he was crying so much, and he wasn't supposed to cry so much. That was why they'd given him those eyes, maybe.

Just because he maybe looked weak. He had to be a brave boy if he wanted to be a hero like the man in his dreams said that he was. So he couldn't cry. Even if his heart was really heavy and he was all alone right now, and even if his leg was covered in the blood from his knee. Even if his legs hurt really bad and his fingers were numb and bloodied.

Not even if he really wanted to, because he was scared to be alone and it was almost dark now.

Times like that had always been the worst. Times when he'd been alone in the dark, sometimes crying and sometimes, as he grew older, he became too old to cry. Too brave and so he'd remain in the dark, just staring out at the stars, wondering why he'd been left alone.

Even when things seemed the most unfair, he'd just do his best to look as much like the brave hero person as he could. He didn't cry and he had a smile for every occasion. He just held tight to the belief that one day... one day he'd find someone who wouldn't look at him with those eyes. Someone who would be there to clean his wounds and bandage him. Someone who would want to love him the way that those other kids got to feel love.

Someone who wouldn't judge him or hate him. He'd wait forever if he had to.

By the time he was twelve, he was sure that he would have to wait forever.

It wasn't until years later that he'd realized why people had looked at him that way. That he realized that they had been afraid of him and that he hadn't had anyone to take care of him the way he needed to be taken care of because his parents had died.

They'd left him alone, and it was all because of the beast locked inside of him and one man- one man that had hated the village so much that he'd taken away everything that Naruto had ever had.

Sasuke had once (or maybe more than once, it was hard to remember at this point) accused him of not knowing what it was like to lose your family, because he'd always been alone. He'd said that their pain was different.

At that time... Sasuke had been right. As much as it pained Naruto to think of the fact that Sasuke had known this kind of emptiness... he'd been right. But it wasn't like that anymore. Not anymore.

Naruto had finally met those people. The two that had given him life and- even if he hadn't known it for so long, they were the two who had made sure that he was full of their love before he'd been full of that demon. He knew what it was like now to see the smile of his mother and the approving nod of his father. To feel their love, unbridled and stronger than anything else he'd felt in his entire life. He knew what it was like to be a part of something that he'd only ever seen through the window of other people's lives.

Now it was his turn.

Until he was snapped back to reality and to the realization that they were gone. They were really, truly, honestly gone from his life and he was back to being himself again. He'd known love before he'd known anything else, and so he was the same as those other kids who'd had their mothers and fathers to heal their hurts and to guide them through their lives, and now he'd felt a glimmer of what that had been like.

He knew for sure that they'd loved him more than anything else in the world. That he'd been the most important thing to someone in his life. That he'd known the extent of that feeling.

Maybe now he knew what Sasuke was talking about, because ever since that day, the day that he'd felt and seen his mother and father... since that day he'd felt as though something was missing. He could still feel their love of course, hot and pure and almost as though it was protecting him still, but it felt as though there was a part of him, such a big part of him that was missing.

Like he'd been given it back and then it had been taken away again just as quickly, and he was left missing something that he'd only been able to hold completely inside of him for a moment. He was still scrambling for it, desperate to feel it again in its entirety instead of just the shadow of it hovering over him.

Those feelings had almost overwhelmed him the first moment that he'd been shocked back to reality after meeting her for the first- and last- time. It had taken a moment for him to be able to pull up the pieces of himself that had been shattered in that moment, and even another second before he was able to smile reassuringly at the people around him now.

Something had been given to him at that time. Their love and attention and it was a gift that he was sure had never been shared with a person before. He was lucky and he knew that he was. He hadn't been the only person that day to lose someone that loved them. So that was how he had to look at it. That he had been given something that many, many people deserved. That he'd been gifted with this... this kiss against his hurt that he'd never felt before.

Even if he was missing a part of himself now, something stronger than before, he knew that he didn't regret it. Didn't regret having met them, didn't regret having felt their love and their smiles. Didn't regret that he'd been able to give them the closure to move on to whatever it was that came after life for them.

He would never regret what it felt like to be completely loved by one person. So he would be able to smile and be brave. He'd have the courage that it took to be a hero for the rest of his life. When he got old enough, he was sure that he'd be able to give that same kind of love to someone else. To a child of his own, and he'd tell them what it was like to experience it for real.

Smiling, he glanced around him to the people who were watching him carefully. To those people who had come to love him, who he'd come to collect and create a family of his own of, and he knew that there would be a way to build a new half of himself. That he'd be able to feel that love again, even if it was in a different form, and even if it couldn't be the exact same. He might never see his parents again until after his life... but for now he was going to be okay.

He knew that if he fell down now, that there would be people around him to pick him up and brush him off and love him enough to make sure that he moved on.

Steadying himself, his hands clenched at his side and he straightened himself, ready to fight whoever and whatever he had to.

He really was lucky. He was sure of it.


End file.
